Jessica Dickinson was born in St. Paul, MN and has lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York since 1999. She received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1999 and BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1997. Dickinson's work is represented by James Fuentes in New York and Altman Siegel Gallery in San Francisco.

Recent solo exhibitions include James Fuentes, New York, (2024, 2021, 2017, 2015), Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco (2022, 2019, 2016), David Petersen Gallery, Minneapolis (2013); and Maisterravalbuena, Madrid (2012). Numerous group exhibitions include "Sensory Poetics", Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; "Eyes Wide Open", Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, "New Ruins", Katzen Arts Center, Washington D.C.; Gladstone Gallery, New York; The Warehouse, Dallas; Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens;  'Painting in the 2.5th Dimension' at The Zabludowicz Collection, London; 'Come Through' at Sikkema Jenkins, NY; and 'Besides, With, Against, and Yet: Abstraction and The Ready Made Gesture' at The Kitchen, NY, curated by Debra Singer.

Dickinson's work has been reviewed and included in Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, and The New Yorker, among others. In 2015, the first monograph dedicated to Dickinson's work was published by Inventory Press, which includes an essay by Debra Singer and an interview with artist Patricia Treib. To accompany her 2024 solo exhibition, James Fuentes Press published "Jessica Dickinson", which forcuses on one painting with contributing texts by Evie K. Horton and Faye Hirsh.

Public collections include The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,  and The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX.

Dickinson's awards include a residency at Steep Rock Arts in Washinton, CT (2017), an individual grant from the Belle Foundation (2013), Farpath Residency in Dijon, France (2008), Change Inc Grant (2003) and The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program in New York (2001). 

Dickinson has taught extensively, most recently at Cooper Union School of Art, Columbia University School of The Arts, and Yale University School of Art.